Taxonomy (when Naming Things Exceeds Good Sense)

By Author: Donald Ladew
Total Articles: 5
Comment this article

This article warns of the perils of naming so-called diseases for profit rather than for the benefit of science.
Lets start with a definition of Taxonomy. The science, laws, principles of classification. From the Greek words "taxis" and "nomos," which mean "division" and "law." I am going to say it right up front. If you are going to name something you ought to be a decent, reasonably responsible person. Why is this so? Simple. The things we name can and do become fact, believed, applied and used - for good or evil. If I classify a tree as hardwood, it really ought to be hard. Sound reasonable? There are a whole bunch of trees that are called hardwoods, which in fact, are not hard. To tell the truth, I don't really care that much about what botanists call trees. It won't make that much difference in the great scheme of things unless I bang my head into one that I mistakenly thought was soft. But I do care what people name things that can totally affect the way those named are treated or maltreated. For example if I call someone insane and insanity has been incorrectly defined, what happens to that person ...
... thereafter can be singularly cruel and destructive. Governments do this all the time. They say the country, named Frozzle, is an enemy. You and I have a fair idea of what constitutes an enemy. We might think, well if they are an enemy it's okay to go over there and commit all manner of atrocities against its people. It's no good saying, well, I wouldn't do that. Yes, of course there are countries, more accurately leaders of countries that are enemies. I am just saying, be very careful when you name something, the results may be more than your conscience bargained for - if you have a conscience. It's like that silly tree in the forest sophistry. You know, if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound. I may not have got this correct but I think that is the gist of the concept. By extension, the psychiatrist might say; if we don't have a name for the disease how are people going to know it exists? And more to the point, how can we 'treat' it? Here's one for you. Attention Deficit Syndrome (ADD). You have little children acting up in classrooms. They have far too much energy for their parents and teachers. Add to this the fact that these same children are gobbling down a steady diet of junk food heavily laced with sugars and assorted chemicals. Teacher says, sit in that chair Johnny and study. Instead Johnny runs around the room having a great time. What's wrong with Johnny? He wants to play instead of study. What ‘madness' is this?' The sugar and junk food has Johnny as wired as a speed-crazed Peterbilt jockey on a long haul from Chicago to LA. Enter the marketing arm of the psychiatric community. These fellas know you can't ‘treat', can't ‘prescribe' for something that doesn't have a name. Combine this with the gullibility of the weary and poorly educated faced with clever marketers and you have happy faces all over the rat-filled laboratories of universities and boardrooms of drug cartels. Your definitions of these 'diseases' must sound threatening and be stubbornly undecipherable except in the jargon of the psychiatric community. And as a marketer you must say over an over, it is a disease, it is a disease, it is a disease. They know with expert precision that they must get the name accepted and associated as a disease. Until they have done this they cannot prescribe Class II addictive drugs such as Ritalin to children. The fact that this causes children to go out and murder people and exhibit an astonishing number of symptoms unmistakable for real disease, is irrelevant to the successful taxonomist/psychiatrist/marketer. I picked this particular ‘profession' as its potential for harm, and the actual harm it has caused by speciously naming non-existent diseases has caused irreparable harm to literally tens of thousands of children and adults. I think I read somewhere recently that this same bunch of zanies have discovered that puppies have ADD. Having discovered this astonishing and seriously debilitating disease in small animals, they have mobilized the chemical/drug companies to immediately start a crash program to come up with some really serious drugs to alleviate this terrible disorder in your baby Schnauzer. Well done, guys. You have really saved the day. When botanists and biologists were trying to put some order in their sciences it is unlikely they were doing so in order that they could form lucrative associations with assorted drug cartels. They were just classifying the world they lived in, not finding justifications to butcher it. Taxonomy is not a bad thing. It is a useful tool of science in the hands of the benign. In the hands of others who have no moral sense of their world and operate under the strange belief system that if it feels good just go ahead and do it, it becomes extraordinarily harmful. And it isn't an accident, or a failed experiment. This is when Taxonomy exceeds good sense. About the Author Mr. Ladew has traveled and worked all over the world. He spent many years as an aerospace engineer. He works as a technical writer and trainer. Mr. Ladew is also a novelist (2 books published), writes articles, essays, short stories and Haiku. he has also written a best selling business book for mid-level supervisors.